Bill puts marijuana penalties issue back before legislators

11:49 PM,
Oct. 3, 2012

Marijuana plants are seen in Chicago on Wednesday.

Written by

Sophia Voravong
svoravong@jconline.com

It's not uncommon for state Sen. Ron Alting, R-Lafayette, to field phone calls and emails from worried parents and grandparents whose children or grandchildren were arrested for possessing marijuana.

Their concerns are almost always in the same vein:

" 'Senator, my kid made a bad choice. ... He's going to get a felony out of this. It's going to ruin his life forever' for, relatively speaking, a small amount of marijuana," Alting recalled Tuesday. ...